Giordano Salvatori, founder of STA · 05/11/2026 · 5 minute read
On the spot market you pay and receive the coin. You buy a bitcoin at today's price and it is yours, in your account, until you decide to sell it. With futures you buy nothing: you open a contract whose value follows the price of the coin, and at the end of the trade you receive or pay the difference. It is like the difference between buying a house and betting on what it will be worth, with only the share you put in as collateral for the bet.
Neither of the two paths is better than the other. They serve different purposes and carry different risks, and this is exactly where many beginners stumble: they choose futures because they promise more, without understanding that «more» also applies to losses.
| Spot | Futures | |
|---|---|---|
| What you get | The real coin | A contract on its price |
| Leverage | Usually none | Often yes, even high |
| Direction | You gain if it rises | Long if it rises, short if it falls |
| Maximum loss | What you paid | The margin of the position, and with leverage it gets there fast |
| Liquidation | No | Yes, if the margin doesn't hold |
| Holding costs | None, apart from fees | Funding on perpetuals, plus fees |
| Expiry | None | Yes on classic futures, no on perpetuals |
Because without leverage you can lose at most what you put in. If you buy a coin for 100 and the price halves, you still hold one worth 50, and if you wait you may not even have to sell it. Nobody closes the position for you, and there is no level of liquidation that throws you out in the middle of the night.
Spot does have a practical limit, though: if the market falls and you want to take advantage of it, you can usually only stand still. You also need to have the whole amount you want to invest in hand.
They add two things, the possibility to go short, that is, setting up a trade for a falling price, and the leverage. Illustrative example, with made up numbers and not an STA result: with 100 of margin and leverage 5 you control a position of 500. A 2% move against you is worth 10, which is 10% of the margin. On a spot position of 100 the same swing would be worth 2.
Leverage is an amplifier, not a gift. It multiplies what happens, for better and for worse, and with high leverage small moves are enough to reach liquidation. On top of that there is the cost of keeping the position open: on perpetuals you pay or receive the funding rate at regular intervals. How these instruments come about is explained in the guide to perpetual contracts.
For someone starting from zero, spot is the simplest ground, because there are few mechanisms to learn: you buy, you hold, you sell. Futures ask you to understand margin, leverage, funding and liquidation before you even make your first trade. They are not forbidden to beginners, but they demand more preparation and a stop decided before you enter.
A rule that helps: choose the instrument based on what you are ready to lose and how much time you can give to the position, not on how much it could return. If you can't explain out loud what happens to your position when the price falls by 5%, you are not ready for leverage yet.
With spot and with futures the question is the same: how much am I willing to lose on this trade? The method is the position sizing, which starts from the loss you accept and ends at the size of the position. With leverage the formula doesn't change, only how fast the margin gets used up. The stop loss is the part that turns the idea into a rule.
Yes, and for this choice it is the most honest way. A demo account with real prices lets you open the same trade first without leverage and then with leverage, and see with your own eyes how the margin changes. The big picture, from the basics to the costs, is in the guide to mindful online trading, and for costs there is also the article on how worthwhile it really is.
STA works on OKX derivatives: ten artificial intelligence agents analyze the markets twice a day, with a debate between a Bull and a Bear, and every card comes with its stop. Your funds stay in your OKX account. If you read a card and don't know what long, short or leverage mean, you already know where to come back to.
The DEMO is free forever, with real prices and the same cards as REAL. You need an account. During the launch phase, which began on 16 October 2026, STA's fees are temporarily disabled, even in REAL; the ordinary price list, suspended while the launch lasts, is 18% of the positive net result of each day, with no offsetting of losses. The history of the cards, losses included, is public on GitHub.
Every card as soon as it closes, with the result and what STA learned from it. It's free and you don't need to sign up.
Follow the channelA DEMO account with virtual capital and real prices, the same cards as REAL users.
Try DEMO for free →This article is for information only and is not investment advice. Trading crypto-assets involves a high risk, including the total loss of the capital used. Numerical examples are for illustration.
Perpetual contracts: what they are, why they never expire, and how funding, margin and liquidation work. An illustrative example, no promises.
Trading liquidation: what it is, how to estimate the liquidation price with leverage and five ways to avoid it. Illustrative example, no promises.
STA alternatives compared: manual trading, signal channels, automated bots and AI cards. Who decides, who holds the funds, what you can verify.
